Tips for giving good, interesting presentations

Tips for giving good, interesting presentations

Why A Good Presentation? You want people to: Understand what you are saying Be INTERESTED in what you say Think you re great! What happens if you give a bad presentation? People may not pay attention They may fall asleep! They may not take notice of what you are saying 2

Keep your audience interested Keep your audience interested. Keep them with you! Things that can affect the audience s interest: Topic, topic depth Attitude/Presence Mannerisms 3

Know Your Topic Be prepared to answer questions! What if I don t know the answer? Know WHEN to say I don t know Know HOW to say I don t know Don t just stand there uncomfortably! Be able to recover from interruptions Know what to skip if you re running late Don t just talk faster! 4

Know Your Audience What are their backgrounds? Will the audience know what you are talking about? Is your talk too simple or too difficult? Will the audience have an interest in your topic? How detailed should you get? 5

Know Your Location Do you need to bring a laptop? Do you need to bring a CD, or email a PPT in advance? Do you need the Internet? How far is audience from screen? Do you need a laser pointer? Do you need to prepare handouts? 6

Attitude. (Yours) Are you INTERESTED in your topic? If no, get a different one! If yes, ACT LIKE IT! If YOU aren t excited You can t expect OTHER people to be! Don t talk down to audience You know more than them about THIS They know more than you about other stuff 7

Dead Man Talking Are you hiding behind the podium? Are your hands/face motionless? Are you staring at the audience? at your laptop? at the screen? at the ceiling? Is your back to the audience? Blah, blah, blah, blah IF SO you re probably BORING! 8

I Drank A Case Of LUCOZADE! Sometimes nerves make us talk fast. Calm down. E-nun-see-ate. It s not a race People need time to absorb information Take a bottle of water if necessary Bottles if you can work a cap (spillage) Glass if you re using a laser pointer 9

Is This Thing On? <tap tap> Feedback kills people! Most PA systems are tuned so that the microphone can be in the middle of your chest Not 2mm from your mouth Modulate your voice evenly Be careful turning your head affects volume! If you are not using a microphone project your voice! 10

Where are your hands? You have a set of moves that repeat during your talk Make sure they aren t silly looking Don t point with your middle finger! Record yourself speaking Do a practice for friends Make sure they re not too nice You want honest feedback! 11

Ummmm The Uh Yeah. Practice makes perfect Caveat: OVER practicing can be bad Do not read your slides like a script Most people lose 20 IQ points in front of an audience! 12

Slide Design Goals: Convey the necessary information Slides must be readable/understandable Slides must be interesting (enough) Avoid: Over stimulation Booooring 13

Use 1-2 slides per minute of your presentation Write in point form, not complete sentences Include 4-5 points per slide Avoid wordiness: use key words and phrases only Slide structure 14

Logos We know you had support You don t need to list all of them on every slide! If on the first slide, don t obscure title/authors Maybe save it for last slide 15

Outline Make your 1st or 2nd slide an outline of your presentation Follow the order of your outline for the rest of the presentation Only place main points on the outline slide Example: Use the titles of each slide as main points 16

Outline Slides If you use an outline slide, make it USEFUL Everyone (hopefully) introduces their topic Everyone explains their work/topic, gives results What is specific to YOUR talk? Talk length correlates to outline need Talk is 45 minutes, maybe! Talk is 2 minutes probably not. Check with your tutor. 17

README.TXT Do not attempt to put all the text, code, or explanation of what you are talking about directly onto the slide, especially if it consists of full, long sentences. Or paragraphs. There s no place for paragraphs on slides. If you have complete sentences, you can probably take something out. If you do that, you will have too much stuff to read on the slide, which isn t always a good thing. Like the previous slide, people do not really read all the stuff on the slides. That s why it s called a presentation and not a reading of your work Practice makes perfect, which is what gets you away from having to have all of you notes in textual form on the screen in front of you. Utilise the Notes function of PowerPoint, have them printed out for your reference. The audience doesn t need to hear the exact same thing that you are reading to them. The bullet points are simply talking points and should attempt to summarise the big ideas that you are trying to convey If you ve reached anything less than 18 point font, please: Remove some of the text Split up the text and put it on separate slides Perhaps you are trying to do much in this one slide? Reading a slide is annoying. You should not simply be a text-to-speech converter. 18

Bad structure This page contains too many words for a presentation slide. It is not written in point form, making it difficult both for your audience to read and for you to present each point. The slide looks much more complicated than it really is. In short, your audience will spend too much time trying to read this paragraph instead of listening to you. 19

Font Size You are close to your monitor Your audience is far from the screen Tahoma 32 pt 28 pt 24 pt 20 pt 18 pt 16 pt 14 pt 12 pt 10 pt TNR 32 pt 28 pt 24 pt 20 pt 18 pt 16 pt 14 pt 12 pt 10 pt Courier 32 pt 28 pt 24 pt 20 pt 18 pt 16 pt 14 pt 12 pt 10 pt Comic 32 pt 28 pt 24 pt 20 pt 18 pt 16 pt 14 pt 12 pt 10 pt Lucida Sans 32 pt 28 pt 24 pt 20 pt 18 pt 16 pt 14 pt 12 pt 10 pt 20

Bad fonts If you use a small font, your audience won t be able to read what you have written Don t use a complicated font Use clean, clear fonts that are easy to read Times New Roman and Comic Sans are overused! 21

Squint City If you find yourself saying you probably can t read/see this, but Then you probably have a BAD SLIDE! Test on a real screen Not just your computer screen 15 away. 22

This is a really long title for this single slide, I should have just summarized This is hard to read. Many people don t read the title anyway. Avoid long titles! 23

Know Slide Boundaries People can t read text that runs off the side of the slide It also looks unprofessional. 24

Show one point at a time: Good practice This will help the audience concentrate on what you are saying. This will prevent the audience from reading ahead. This will help you keep your presentation focused. 25

How many Levels of Bullets Aren t Everything Hierarchy do You think»you need * To express - Your point? 26

Speelchick How samrt will poeple thikn yuo are? Proof your slides for: speling mistakes, the use of repeated words and grammatical errors you might have make! Watch for: there/their/they re too/to/two its/it s 27

You are not Pixar Studios Use animation sparingly; it can be very annoying! Use only where it is USEFUL Know if the presentation system will handle it Different versions of PowerPoint, Macs, etc. Or use multiple slides to safely animate Flip-book style 28

my eyes are burning! Can you look at this for 45 minutes? Colours look different on every LCD projector Colours look different on different projectors or whiteboards Side note: if printing slides, you may want to choose a white background to save ink! 29

I See A Ghost Different projectors show different results Colours to avoid with white are: Light Green Light Blue Pale Yellow Usually can t read this Your slides should have good contrast 30

Contrast Guidelines A white background, with black text is clearest Can use other (dark) text colours But be careful -- don t be distracting! Make sure to not use light-on-white or white-on-light Don t using glaring colors If you are not an artist or designer, you don t have to get fancy! Keep it clear and tasteful! 31

Font colour Use a colour of font that contrasts sharply with the background Ex: blue font on white background Use colour to reinforce the logic of your structure Ex: light blue title and dark blue text Use colour to emphasise a point But only use this occasionally 32

Too many colours Using a font colour that does not contrast with the background colour is hard to read Using colour for decoration is distracting and annoying. Using a different colour for each point is unnecessary Using a different colour for secondary points is also unnecessary Trying to be creative can also be bad! 33

Backgrounds Avoid backgrounds that are distracting or difficult to read from Always be consistent with the background that you use 34

Images Images can enhance your presentation Ensure they are relevant Ensure they have the correct tone Example: 35

Smart art Smart art is very visual and easy to use. Images can enhance your presentation Ensure they are relevant Ensure they have the correct tone Mind copyright issues.. Smart art is very visual and easy to use 36

Picture This There are exceptions, but in general Don t have only text on most of your slides Try to use diagrams wherever applicable Example: 37

38 Use Simple Examples This isn t one. It doesn t help. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z AA BB CC DD EE FF GG HH II JJ KK LL MM NN OO PP QQ RR SS TT UU VV WW XX YY ZZ a b c d e f g h h j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Results You have lots of cool results No one can read this No one can understand this Graphs are your friends A B C D E 0.78799174 0.87677244 0.99348605 0.23781547 0.24437526 0.24910355 0.79708654 0.39825661 0.4894876 0.22079456 0.65729261 0.46901063 0.36471191 0.04697233 0.63468059 0.48205396 0.52657506 0.70503426 0.35280176 0.40935313 0.46328137 0.0774365 0.71517444 0.9394662 0.46843638 0.09762717 0.70884867 0.81407539 0.24571711 0.72497819 0.00773315 0.39906447 0.42344939 0.90776976 0.22209006 0.15857663 0.4181197 0.56488165 0.91405841 0.3578349 0.59242455 0.17894389 0.61926672 0.02978346 0.50789172 0.41285757 0.71470398 0.31906988 0.79658426 0.21587647 0.8855586 0.46534556 0.3701164 0.12452538 0.33415497 0.28231467 0.17509894 0.85801024 0.72984635 0.94731238 0.82370951 0.03235362 0.95622299 0.27726297 0.76619879 0.86245578 0.21094811 0.93272287 0.48265505 0.04960646 0.38953201 0.3665743 0.33754918 0.28178635 0.39637009 0.80522838 0.63509032 0.43333321 0.97677807 0.96198172 0.35928212 0.14878634 0.44201417 0.23251612 0.83375154 0.72099806 0.75212293 0.81061259 0.23756284 0.48518996 0.13329065 0.31602317 0.87489249 0.5304632 0.26191565 0.2588109 0.89039838 0.81380512 0.59139955 0.48488759 0.99314419 0.34635186 0.73292414 0.25933239 0.29230491 0.88041055 0.11473455 0.01934078 0.15717245 0.93780676 0.72332226 0.80195173 0.1792961 0.07832254 0.41154579 0.95925002 0.41696749 0.24905812 0.2111233 0.00256536 0.00580885 0.65322119 0.49666074 0.91641276 0.40573275 0.26004883 0.3010126 0.45604195 0.99935168 0.91271048 0.1508427 0.84418604 0.96241158 0.05548096 0.94093154 0.63750743 0.08979734 0.11100042 0.34646613 0.09994533 0.17176871 0.85518113 0.94522781 0.29368901 0.77444161 0.15186964 0.53105474 0.69991523 0.07876247 0.0023978 0.72306385 0.73755246 0.71402806 0.68090612 0.76015636 0.42140074 0.39036871 0.02247591 0.94725973 0.70692042 39

Graphs Use graphs rather than just charts and words Data in graphs is easier to comprehend & retain than is raw data Trends are easier to visualise in graph form Always title your graphs 40

Graphs Can Also Be The Enemy 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 Series1 Series2 Series3 Series4 Series5 0.2 0 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 41

Consistency Keep same style throughout the presentation Use the Slide Master to cutomise your slides click on View and Slide Master 42

Your closing Use an effective and strong closing Your audience is likely to remember your last words Use a conclusion slide to: Summarise the main points of your presentation Suggest future avenues of research 43

End your presentation with a simple question slide to: Invite your audience to ask questions Provide a visual aid during question period Avoid ending a presentation abruptly Question/s 44

Summary/Conclusion If your talk is more than 5 minutes, it s nice to summarise your topic and results Bring people back if they zoned out Remind them why you re great Give selling points here Include the positive points Reason for talking about this 45

Bad Presentations Audience won t see your work is great They won t get your important message! Those are some NASTY colors Please let it be OVER zzz Hey it matches my shirt. What does that slide say? Dunno, I m playing Candy Crush 46

Good Presentations Interesting topic, explained at audience s level Slides are understandable and easy to see Good presentations reflect well on speaker! I wonder if this technique would work for my problem I never thought of that! Interesting Let s talk to them at the break I understood this one! This is good Wow! 47

GOOD Luck! 48